13 Questions With ONE Management

Introduction

Why are they famous?

ONE Management has become one of the world’s best known talent agencies of our time. Some of its clients are world-renowned supermodels such as Helena Christensen and Naomi Campbell. The people of ONE Management also work with bands and solo musicians such as Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pharrell. The enterprise has recently widened its scope to represent some of America’s hottest up-and-coming actors in the TV and film industry.

Quick Bio

Scott Lipps launched ONE Model Management agency in 2002, and has shaped the images and careers of supermodels such as Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigova and Angela Lindvall.

In 2005, he launched ONE Music and has worked with some of the world’s greatest pop music artists, including The Kills, Chris Cornell and Tommy Lee.

Recently, Lipps teamed up with L.A.-based manager Darren Goldberg, and together they have increased the reach of ONE Management into the field of acting. Lipps and Goldberg are building the careers of some of the hottest rising actors in the industry, such as Sin City’s Nick Stahl and Lost’s Emilie de Ravin.

Interview

Q-1:Tell us how ONE Management branched out to become a multimedia powerhouse for not only fashion, but for music, film and television as well.

Scott: I launched the agency in 2002 with the idea of being the first multimedia company in entertainment to merge all these worlds -- being film, music and fashion. The idea was to be able to cross-platform all media and give modeling campaigns to actors or take models and put them into acting. And with the music industry as well -- to be able to take those people and expose them to high-profile people in the fashion business, to be able to take rock stars in bands and expose them to the fashion world and get them modeling campaigns.

In 2005, we launched ONE Management Music where we work with some of the best bands in the world, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Pharrell to Eagles of Death Metal to Tommy Lee to Chris Cornell, and everybody in between. And we do everything from branding to endorsements to editorial. I come from music, I was a touring musician, so I come from the background of management and have always had the vision of doing everything on the grander scale and bringing all these worlds together, and I think Darren and I share a very similar vision.

I had been working with high-profile models such as Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigova, Angela Lindvall, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell, when a couple of years ago, Darren Goldberg and I started working with a mutual client.

Darren: Yeah, I met Scott through Josie Maran, who was doing very well in the modeling world, and I crossed her over into film. She had a huge part with Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and was in Little Black Book with Brittany Murphy, Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates, and she worked on The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio.

So that’s when I started to have a clear understanding of the fashion business. Scott always had his eye on the film world, and we talked about merging what we were doing, and here we are.

Q-2:What made you decide to expand ONE Management into the field of acting?

Scott: In New York you don’t have much cross-platforming going on, and there are so many talented models who can act and so many beautiful actors who should be modeling, and I want to help them get into that world. I’ve always been into the film business.

And that’s not to say that every model should be acting. Only two to three percent of models can really act -- the Uma Thurmans and Charlize Therons of the world. So I thought, who wouldn’t want to help further the success of these models and hook them up with the right people and get this incredible career going? If you have the right expertise and the right managers on your team, it’s all possible.

So the idea with Darren was to form a real management entity in Los Angeles, and I think you’ll see over the course of the next few years that we already manage some of the best up-and-coming actors, and we’ll be taking on more and growing at a fast rate. So it will be great to see all these worlds joining together.

Darren: Having just worked with actors, these companies never covered the whole fashion side of things under the same roof. They always sourced it out. And you look at the fashion world today; a lot of these big campaigns and big magazines have actors in them. So, as my business was growing, I saw the value in teaming up with Scott in terms of the opportunities for all of these actors; they could be introduced to that world and have everything under one banner.

Scott Lipps works 355 days out of the year.

Q-3:What actors are you representing right now?

Darren: We represent a lot of young, hot actors right now who are doing really well. We have a young actress, Emilie de Ravin, who is in the TV show Lost and played in The Hills Have Eyes and the movie Brick. She’s been on many magazine covers from Entertainment Weekly to In Style, and the doors are open right now for her.

Nick Stahl was on the HBO series Carnivale and starred in Terminator 3 with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Maggie Grace is also one of the stars on Lost, and she just finished a movie with Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar called The Girls' Guide to Hunting & Fishing.

Billy Campbell starred in the TV show Once and Again and starred alongside Jennifer Lopez in the movie Enough, and he’s currently in a critically acclaimed show called The 4400.

Angela Lindvall, a model who we’ve crossed over, starred in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and John Terry, who’s an older actor, recently starred in a movie called Zodiac with Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., and he’s also on Lost. He’s also starred in a show with Denise Richards called Secrets of a Small Town for ABC.

Q-4:What matters most in the industry: having a certain look, having a certain talent or being personable?

Darren: It’s definitely a package. We all know there are actors in the industry who aren’t incredibly talented, but they have a certain something about them -- a certain charisma, a certain smile, a twinkle in their eye that translates so well on the screen, and I’m sure Scott can tell you that it’s very similar in the fashion world with models in magazines. But it’s nice to have a package, and if you have all three qualities then that’s really great.

Scott: Yeah, a million percent the personality thing is super important. On the fashion end of things, a lot of times, without the right personality, girls will only work for a certain amount of time. But the really, really big models -- the supermodels -- the ones who have been working for 10 to 20 years, have to have something about them that’s going to draw people into wanting to work with them time and time again. So I would say that personality is at least 50% of the package.

Darren: And the same goes for actors: When you walk into a room and you’re meeting with a big producer, a director and some executives, it’s so important to come across as charming and engaging and intelligent -- it’s what helps these people get jobs. I mean, it’s one thing to be a really good-looking guy or a gorgeous girl, but when it comes down to it, if there’s not much substance, it becomes a bit more difficult.

Actors have to have these additional qualities that directors are going to want to work with, you know when you’re spending so much time -- two, three months -- working on set, it’s nice for directors to have a good interaction with the actors they’re working with.

Are more models headed to the big screen? Find out...

Quick Bio

Scott Lipps launched ONE Model Management agency in 2002, and has shaped the images and careers of supermodels such as Claudia Schiffer, Eva Herzigova and Angela Lindvall.

In 2005, he launched ONE Music and has worked with some of the world’s greatest pop music artists, including The Kills, Chris Cornell and Tommy Lee.

Recently, Lipps teamed up with L.A.-based manager Darren Goldberg, and together they have increased the reach of ONE Management into the field of acting. Lipps and Goldberg are building the careers of some of the hottest rising actors in the industry, such as Sin City’s Nick Stahl and Lost’s Emilie de Ravin.

Tell us how ONE Management branched out to become a multimedia powerhouse for not only fashion, but for music, film and television as well.

ONE Management: Scott: I launched the agency in 2002 with the idea of being the first multimedia company in entertainment to merge all these worlds -- being film, music and fashion. The idea was to be able to cross-platform all media and give modeling campaigns to actors or take models and put them into acting. And with the music industry as well -- to be able to take those people and expose them to high-profile people in the fashion business, to be able to take rock stars in bands and expose them to the fashion world and get them modeling campaigns.

In 2005, we launched ONE Management Music where we work with some of the best bands in the world, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Pharrell to Eagles of Death Metal to Tommy Lee to Chris Cornell, and everybody in between. And we do everything from branding to endorsements to editorial. I come from music, I was a touring musician, so I come from the background of management and have always had the vision of doing everything on the grander scale and bringing all these worlds together, and I think Darren and I share a very similar vision.

I had been working with high-profile models such as Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigova, Angela Lindvall, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell, when a couple of years ago, Darren Goldberg and I started working with a mutual client.

Darren: Yeah, I met Scott through Josie Maran, who was doing very well in the modeling world, and I crossed her over into film. She had a huge part with Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and was in Little Black Book with Brittany Murphy, Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates, and she worked on The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio.

So that’s when I started to have a clear understanding of the fashion business. Scott always had his eye on the film world, and we talked about merging what we were doing, and here we are.

What made you decide to expand ONE Management into the field of acting?

OM: Scott: In New York you don’t have much cross-platforming going on, and there are so many talented models who can act and so many beautiful actors who should be modeling, and I want to help them get into that world. I’ve always been into the film business.

And that’s not to say that every model should be acting. Only two to three percent of models can really act -- the Uma Thurmans and Charlize Therons of the world. So I thought, who wouldn’t want to help further the success of these models and hook them up with the right people and get this incredible career going? If you have the right expertise and the right managers on your team, it’s all possible.

So the idea with Darren was to form a real management entity in Los Angeles, and I think you’ll see over the course of the next few years that we already manage some of the best up-and-coming actors, and we’ll be taking on more and growing at a fast rate. So it will be great to see all these worlds joining together.

Darren: Having just worked with actors, these companies never covered the whole fashion side of things under the same roof. They always sourced it out. And you look at the fashion world today; a lot of these big campaigns and big magazines have actors in them. So, as my business was growing, I saw the value in teaming up with Scott in terms of the opportunities for all of these actors; they could be introduced to that world and have everything under one banner.

Quick Fact

Scott Lipps works 355 days out of the year.

What actors are you representing right now?

OM: Darren: We represent a lot of young, hot actors right now who are doing really well. We have a young actress, Emilie de Ravin, who is in the TV show Lost and played in The Hills Have Eyes and the movie Brick. She’s been on many magazine covers from Entertainment Weekly to In Style, and the doors are open right now for her.

Nick Stahl was on the HBO series Carnivale and starred in Terminator 3 with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Maggie Grace is also one of the stars on Lost, and she just finished a movie with Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar called The Girls' Guide to Hunting & Fishing.

Billy Campbell starred in the TV show Once and Again and starred alongside Jennifer Lopez in the movie Enough, and he’s currently in a critically acclaimed show called The 4400.

Angela Lindvall, a model who we’ve crossed over, starred in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and John Terry, who’s an older actor, recently starred in a movie called Zodiac with Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., and he’s also on Lost. He’s also starred in a show with Denise Richards called Secrets of a Small Town for ABC.

What matters most in the industry: having a certain look, having a certain talent or being personable?

OM: Darren: It’s definitely a package. We all know there are actors in the industry who aren’t incredibly talented, but they have a certain something about them -- a certain charisma, a certain smile, a twinkle in their eye that translates so well on the screen, and I’m sure Scott can tell you that it’s very similar in the fashion world with models in magazines. But it’s nice to have a package, and if you have all three qualities then that’s really great.

Scott: Yeah, a million percent the personality thing is super important. On the fashion end of things, a lot of times, without the right personality, girls will only work for a certain amount of time. But the really, really big models -- the supermodels -- the ones who have been working for 10 to 20 years, have to have something about them that’s going to draw people into wanting to work with them time and time again. So I would say that personality is at least 50% of the package.

Darren: And the same goes for actors: When you walk into a room and you’re meeting with a big producer, a director and some executives, it’s so important to come across as charming and engaging and intelligent -- it’s what helps these people get jobs. I mean, it’s one thing to be a really good-looking guy or a gorgeous girl, but when it comes down to it, if there’s not much substance, it becomes a bit more difficult.

Actors have to have these additional qualities that directors are going to want to work with, you know when you’re spending so much time -- two, three months -- working on set, it’s nice for directors to have a good interaction with the actors they’re working with.